Public service mutuals: partnerships, collaboration and service-user outcomes

The provision of public services in England has undergone numerous reforms and a process of marketisation over the last few decades. This marketisation of public services has been led by a desire to create more cost-efficient services that are also responsive to service-user’s needs and is being driven by government through funding and legislation. In doing so, the government have encouraged the transfer of Local Authority staff into new provider and employee-owned mutual organisations (also known as ‘spin-outs’). This paper builds upon prior research that developed a theoretical overview of organisational change in the spin-out process, which was grounded in both policy-formulation and partnership theory. The research reported in this paper refines and develops this model, focusing in particular on the ‘outcome’ phase of the spin-out process. It draws on semi-structured interviews with senior managers at four spin-out organisations in order to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of what the outcomes are for spin-out staff and their service-users. In addition, it draws on survey data gathered from 66 spin-outs that allows the research to refine the partnership model by highlighting the differing importance of partners at different periods of the spin-out process. The research is ongoing but early analysis of the data reveals that service management and local authority senior managers and elected officials are the main arbiters of power at the start of the spin-out process, but that this importance reduces over time as the spin-out becomes more independent and service staff and users develop more strategic input. The data also suggests that outcomes for service beneficiaries improve following the spin-out process. The results are discussed in relation to our model of ‘organisational change in the spin-out process’ and the prior literature on partnerships, collaborations and policy-formulation

Business Critical: Understanding a Company’s Current and Desired Stages of Corporate Responsibility Maturity

It’s been a while since the Corporate Responsibility profession took stock of its collective wisdom on where we have been, and where we are going on running businesses responsibly. Meanwhile hardly a week goes by without a helpful suggestion from the outside world on how an organisation should improve its economic value, social usefulness and environmental efficiency; and it is very easy to spot businesses that get their social, environmental and economic decisions out of balance: these organisations hit the headlines seemingly within nanoseconds. On the upside, businesses are increasingly taking an approach that builds an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) premium into the core economic valuation. This is achieved by those organisations which bring in a diverse set of views to inform risk and reputation management activities, and to build a research and development pipeline for the future. This is managing both the negative and the positive social, environmental and economic impacts

An analysis of schema change intervention

Successful organizational transformation relies on being able to achieve paradigm or collective schema change, and more particularly, the ability to manage the interplay between pre-existing schemas and alternative schemas required for new environments. This conceptual paper presents an analysis and critique of collective schema change dynamics. Two schema change pathways are reflected in the literature: frame-juxtapose-transition and frame-disengage-learning. Research findings in each pathway are limited and/or contradictory. Moreover, research on schema change focuses primarily on social dynamics and less on the relationship between social schema change dynamics and individual schema change dynamics. One implication of this lack of focus on individual schema change dynamics is the masking of the high level of cognitive processing and cognitive effort required by individuals to effect schema change. The capacity to achieve organizational transformation requires that more attention is given to managing these dynamics, which, in turn, requires significant investment in developing the change leadership capabilities of managers and the organizations they manage

An Approach to Transform Public Administration into SOA-based Organizations

Nowadays, Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) is widely spread in private organizations. However, when transferring this knowledge to Public Administration, it is realized that it has not been transformed in terms of its legal nature into organizations capable to operate under the SOA paradigm. This fact prevents public administration bodies from offering the efficient services they have been provided by different boards of governments. A high-level framework to perform this transformation is proposed. Taking it as starting point, an instance of a SOA Target Meta-Model can be obtained by means of an iterative and incremental process based on the analysis of imperatives and focused on the particular business context of each local public administration. This paper briefly presents a practical experience consisting in applying this process to a Spanish regional public administration.Junta de Andalucía TIC-578

Exploring the Antecedents of Potential Absorptive Capacity and its Impact on Innovation Performance.

This paper builds upon the theoretical framework developed by Zahra and George [Absorptive capacity: a review, reconceptualization, and extension. Academy of Management Review 2002;27:185–203] to empirically explore the antecedents of potential absorptive capacity (PAC), i.e. the ability to identify and assimilate external knowledge flows. Based on a sample of 2464 innovative Spanish firms, we find evidence that R&D cooperation, external knowledge acquisition and experience with knowledge search are key antecedents of a firm’s PAC. Also, during periods of important internal reshaping, when there are significant changes in strategy, design of the organization and marketing, firms exert more effort to accumulate PAC. Finally, we find that PAC is a source of competitive advantage in innovation, especially in the presence of efficient internal knowledge flows that help reduce the distance between potential and realized capacity.Knowledge management; Innovation; Absorptive capacity;

Strategiile de patrundere pe pietele externe si importanta managementului bazat pe cunostinte in conditiile actualei crize economice globale

Abstract Current social and economic environment is in continuous change and transformation and adaptation to existing conditions are favourable, a painful adjustment to reflect loss of comparative advantage, particularly important for some communities. Global disruption which affected the whole economy in mid 2007 and then accelerated in 2008 and whose tentacles have spread and for 2009, would not have been possible without the rare coincidence of a series of setbacks and triggers on the market, some reflecting major imbalances in the global economy, others specific to the operation of sophisticated financial markets. The importance of foreign markets is even greater since most companies are engaged in a process of growth that requires them to find new business opportunities in other countries, as domestic markets mature. This paper highlights the priority role that knowledge management plays in foreign markets penetration problem in context of the internationalization of enterprises, in order to obtain the desired results.economic crisis, markets, strategy, knowledge

Dynamic real-time risk analytics of uncontrollable states in complex internet of things systems, cyber risk at the edge

The Internet of Things (IoT) triggers new types of cyber risks. Therefore, the integration of new IoT devices and services requires a self-assessment of IoT cyber security posture. By security posture this article refers to the cybersecurity strength of an organisation to predict, prevent and respond to cyberthreats. At present, there is a gap in the state of the art, because there are no self-assessment methods for quantifying IoT cyber risk posture. To address this gap, an empirical analysis is performed of 12 cyber risk assessment approaches. The results and the main findings from the analysis is presented as the current and a target risk state for IoT systems, followed by conclusions and recommendations on a transformation roadmap, describing how IoT systems can achieve the target state with a new goal-oriented dependency model. By target state, we refer to the cyber security target that matches the generic security requirements of an organisation. The research paper studies and adapts four alternatives for IoT risk assessment and identifies the goal-oriented dependency modelling as a dominant approach among the risk assessment models studied. The new goal-oriented dependency model in this article enables the assessment of uncontrollable risk states in complex IoT systems and can be used for a quantitative self-assessment of IoT cyber risk posture

Sustainable innovation: key conclusions from Sustainable Innovation Conferences 2003–2006 organised by The Centre for Sustainable Design

The following is taken directly from the introduction. This booklet summarises the key conclusions from the 2003–2006 conferences on Sustainable Innovation organised by The Centre for Sustainable Design (www.cfsd.org.uk). The conclusions are drawn from the respective conference presentations, papers and discussions. The publication has been sponsored as part of a ‘Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Innovation & Design’ project awarded to The Centre for Sustainable Design by the South-East England Development Agency (SEEDA)

The Transformation of Microfinance in India: Experiences, Options and Future

The paper looks at the growth and transformation of microfinance organisations (MFO) in India. We first, define microfinance and identify its "value attributes". Having chosen only those MFOs that have microfinance as the core, we look at the transformation experiences. To understand the transformation experiences better, we identify issues that trigger transformation viz: size, diversity of services, financial sustainability, focus and taxation. Having identified these we look at transformation experiences internationally. We examine the Bolivian, Kenyan, Bangladeshi and the Indonesian experience. We then look at the Indian experiences. We argue that the transformation experiences in India are not large in number. However, we have found that there are three forms of organisations that seem to be popular in the microfinance sector - the Non-Banking Finance Companies, the Banks - both Local Area Banks and Urban Co-operative Banks and the Co-operatives. We then argue that in the Indian case, we find that the MFO spins off from the NGO rather than the NGO transforming itself. Having examined various options, we conclude that there is no ideal or easy path for MFOs to mainstream in India. This has implications for regulatory framework. We argue that there should be regulatory changes that allow smaller MFOs to get into more complex forms as they grow organically. We also argue that NGOs should be allowed to invest in the equity of MFOs and MFO promoted banks, as is the case in Bolivia and Africa. We maintain that entry norms on capitalisation for the current forms of organisations (NBFCs, Co-ops and Banks) need not be changed to ensure only genuine MFOs make use of the legislation and not other organisations masquerading as MFOs.